Pain.

Agony.

Burning deep inside me. The storm broke through my core's last barriers. Lightning rippled through my veins. Every cell screamed in torment, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. My broken core hemorrhaged Stamina and Mana uncontrollably. My skills wouldn't fire. I couldn't Flashstep or Mistform the pain. Couldn't Saltspray to counter it.

All I could do was let it rip through my body. The God of Thunder had warned me not to push my core. The system had warned me not to push it. And I hadn't listened. I hadn't had any options, but I still hadn't listened.

Now, I had two. Neither was good.

I could hold on to my connection with Ellen. If I did that, my shattered core would thrash her mental garden, destroying the plants and pools she obviously loved. The echoes of my broken core would reverberate onto hers—and hers wasn't strong enough to withstand that. With no Mana and a weakened framework, she wouldn't survive my core's death throes.

If I let go, she'd Mana Burn instantly. She wasn't B-Rank. Not yet. The disruption to her Mana flow would send her into a downward spiral, and she'd be hard-pressed to continue her consolidation through it. But it was also the only way to keep any semblance of my promises. To stick with her, I had to let her go.

So I loosened my grip and pulled away.

Ellen's hand flailed around, trying to find mine. Her eyes locked with mine. They screamed silent desperation. She was trying to help me. To support me through this. Did she realize that I'd already failed, and that this was the only possible path for her survival? That there was nothing to support? I didn't know.

And a split second later, I couldn't care. I was too busy trying desperately to salvage something from this disaster.

If I could come out of it with the beginnings of an E-Rank core, I could…I could start over. Or I could be a distraction for Ellen, and maybe she could Mana Burn herself a second time to hit the Paragon harder than she'd hit Tathrix. Maybe they'd survive, even if I died..

So, the two remaining bands that had held my core together. That had to be where I started. I started breaking them down and ripping them apart. Just like my D-Rank trial, I needed to break them down and build up a smaller core. One that could hold something. That I could fill with even a drop of Mana and an ounce of Stamina. A starting point.

The shape took form slowly. Stormsteel bands. Nine of them—the tallest only a foot over my head and a foot below my feet. They meshed, looking like one of those old planet wheel things. Then they began to fuse together into a frame around me.

I relaxed. It was working. I was…rebuilding my core, even as the old one leaked energy across my body.

But the storm didn't like that.

It wanted to be free.

I tried to apply the Law of the Shattered Storm. Predictability. Patience. An understanding of aggression. To mitigate the lightning and the torrents of water and the howling, crushing winds. And for a moment, it looked like I might outlast the storm. My core kept building. Kept forming, the stormsteel cage almost touching and almost keeping the thunderbolts out. Almost.

Then the storm I'd held in my core redoubled, and the makeshift foundations of my core shredded.

The Law of the Shattered Storm wasn't the solution, then. I took a shuddering breath through the agony and tried again.

The First Law of the Stormcore. The Law that had gotten me to D-Rank. If anything could have prepared me for this, it was that trial—the God of Thunder's appearance on my mental battlefield, and the cowering, fearful attempt to survive his Stormbreak.

Destruction. Chaos. Deception. None of these would help me. Power? Power might help. The power to force the storm to heed my commands. And inevitability? Yes. Inevitability. I would win. I would tame the storm and force it back into its place. This wouldn't beat me. I couldn't let it.

Power and inevitability. Those were the hallmarks I'd lean on.

I reached out from the cage and grabbed the storm. Tried to drag it inside with me. I couldn't hide from it—so I'd simply overpower it. I was power. I was inevitable. I had to be. Too many people were counting on my promises for me to fail.

But fail I did.

Even as I grasped the storm and tried to force it into my core, it slipped through my fingers. The pain grew and grew inside, until it was all-consuming. Every cell didn't simply burn. They revolted. Refused to obey. My strength leaked from every power, and with every breath, I grew weaker. My grip on the thunder and the lightning went slack, and my core's nine beams cracked and crumbled like rusted old struts in a half-finished, abandoned building. It was nothing but a shadow of what it could have—and should have—been.

It was useless.

There was nothing left to grab. Even if there had been, I had nothing left to hold it with. The sheer rage of the storm crashed down on me. I started to let go. To surrender to its might. If I did that, it would be over. I'd never delve again. But I might survive.

Ellen couldn't kill the boss, though. Not on her own. Not without help. So I wouldn't survive for long.

No.

No, it was better to go down fighting than to surrender for a few minutes of time. And I'd been wrong.

There was something. Not a core—or at least, not a functional one. The Stormsteel was shattered and twisted, wrecked beyond repair. My Stamina and Mana were both gone.

But there was plenty of energy all around me, right? An energy that was both incredibly hostile—that wanted me dead—and yet strangely familiar.

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I could harness that power. It wouldn't be a core. But it would be power. And right now, power was what I needed.

The power to strike a blow against the Paragon that had to be closing in on us even now.

And maybe, the power to survive.

◄▼►

I let myself drift.

Then I forced my mind to be still. Electricity ripped through me—the storm was inside of me, but unbound by my core. I ignored the pain. Instead, I focused on grounding myself like Jessie had tried to teach me. On stilling my body and mind. On emptying myself until I was just as much a husk as my ruined core was.

Only one thought remained: a memory of my mental space.

I opened my eyes. They narrowed in a glare, and I smiled like a predator hunting.

The jagged, inhospitable mountains west of Phoenix. I sat on one, legs folded in a lotus position, hands raised to the sky, fists balled in defiance.

The storm paused for a moment. I felt it gathering overhead. The desert flowers all around my mountain quivered in the sudden stillness. Somewhere in the distance, a coyote called once.

I breathed, closed my eyes again, and focused.

First Law of the Stormcore

Destruction. Chaos, Deception, Power, and the inevitability of the storm. These are the teachers.

Protection, control, patience, and endurance. These are the lessons.

Law of the Shadowed Storm

Exposure. Predictability. Aggression. Patience. And burning light and unbreachable shadow. These are the lessons of the Law of the Shadowed Storm.

The Law of the Stormcore and the Law of the Shattered Storm. There was something here. A tool that I could use. A way to work with the storm, rather than to fight it. I needed to find it. I examined the parts of the Laws.

Destruction, Chaos, Deception, Power, and Inevitability. Those were the five lessons of the Laws I'd consolidated into the First Law of the Stormcore. But they weren't the lessons it had taught me. That was where I'd gone wrong.

The storm broke overhead. Lightning poured down around me. It shattered billion-year-old stone, set fire to the desert until the smell of burning sagebrush and juniper filled my nose, and scorched my skin. The wind—a dry wind, without any rain—shot sand into my nose and mouth as I breathed.

But I'd learned my lesson. Instead of focusing on the five lessons that had taught me the First Law of the Stormcore, I brought my attention to the four lessons it had to teach.

Protection. Control. Patience. Endurance. A foundation—but not for a core. I'd tried to build a core, and I'd failed. I didn't need a core. I needed something else—a way to channel the storm.

It would be dangerous. Violent. I doubted my body would be able to handle it for long. But I'd have the control and patience to know when to use it, and the endurance and protection to survive it if I didn't call on it for long. This was what the Stormcore had been preparing me for. For this moment.

But that wasn't enough. Not nearly enough. I needed to let my rage in—but not like my schoolyard fights. Like the closest chess matches I'd had with Dad. Like what he'd hoped the results of my training would be.

If I was going to call on the storm without my core, I needed more than the wisdom to do it at the right time. I needed to channel that dangerous violence. I'd be exposed. Weak. Vulnerable. That kind of aggression would only work once, and trying to conceal its source would only work against it.

It hit me like a lightning bolt. Energy surged through me—not the agonizing energy of the freed, raging storm, but a purposeful, predictable energy. The storm's wrath began to truly descend. Its rage was every bit as potent as mine. The rain began. Lightning chipped at my mountain. Rock shattered into superheated shards of gravel and cut my face. The entire world shifted into a blue tint, like I'd put on sunglasses.

I stood up, and I lifted my fist in defiance of the storm. The wind screamed past me, and I screamed back.

The storm focused on me. I held my ground. And this time, when it crashed into me, I let it. Whole-heartedly. I had no core to contain it, but I did have my body, and I held it inside of me. Protection. Endurance. Patience. Control. They wrapped around a mass of energy that dwarfed anything the Light of Dawn could create. They didn't restrict it, though. They cradled it. Held it. Gave it structure without binding it.

Not that it didn't hurt. It was agony. Every second of my struggle was agony.

But it worked.

Minutes went by, and I slowly calmed the storm. Shaped it. Molded it into something usable. The sun gradually broke through the clouds overhead, and the sandblasting wind shifted and slowed until it felt like a summer breeze.

My mountain was intact. Part of it, anyway. A thin, narrow spire sat below me, a hundred feet or higher above the sharp rock below. Everything else had been shredded by the wind and shattered by the lightning.

But I'd won. I'd survived. I opened my eyes.

The blue didn't fade.

◄▼►

Queen Mother Yalerox crashed through the stone door displaying her thousand and one victories and her ascension into one of the Thunder God's most powerful Paragons. That it was a priceless artifact didn't matter.

Intruders were in her throne room.

Six of them. Three females. One with her hands on a male's chest. Mana poured off of her. Then it stopped. A healer. But one without the energy to make a difference. The next stood nearby, a book in her hand—a Scriptsmith. Yalerox glared. Someone from the city to the north? She would deal with that upstart soon. And the last, a roiling ball of shadow and storm. Not a threat. Not in time for her to make a difference. None of them was over C-Rank.

And three males. One's spine was severed. The other's armor was rent open, and his blood covered the floor below Yalerox's feet. Tathrix had been here. Yalerox didn't know where he'd gone, or what had become of him, but his work was evident. He'd all but killed the strongest of her enemies.

Only the A-Ranker concerned her. The others were irrelevant. And he was on the threshold of death.

And the last male…Yalerox's eyes locked on him. The God of Thunder's pet. Her rival. She laughed. He had no core. No rank. Nothing. His power, his determination—everything the God of Thunder had seen in him—it was gone. He was a husk. It was a miracle he was alive.

She relaxed. Laughed. Then she walked past her breeding pit and lowered herself into her throne. The intruders' eyes followed her—four sets of them. The Thunder God's Pet and the ball of shadow and storm weren't aware enough to show her proper respect.

"Greetings. I am Queen Mother Yalerox. You have found yourselves in my sanctum, witnesses to my triumph over your world." She paused, considering. "Well, partial witnesses. You will live to see the Eye of the Storm open, but not to see it destroy your world's hopes and dreams. Unfortunately for you, I require your world's true champions to arrive here, and the nature of my portal makes that impossible while you still live. But fear not. You will witness something incredible before you die."

She cast her eyes across the group one more time, looking for anything that could possibly be a threat. The females weren't dangerous. The healer couldn't do more than stabilize. The Scriptsmith had spent herself already. And the other was too occupied by her own battle for survival to join any that might start here.

And the males? Dying, dying, and core-broken.

She activated the Eye of the Storm.

The hurricane outside of her castle began to spin. Static filled the air in her chamber. Rain and wind thrashed against her sandstone walls, and bridges collapsed across the portal world as the Eye of the Storm began to open and power flowed into her.

She wouldn't be able to leave her portal world. Even leaving the throne room wasn't possible while the Eye was open. But this…this was Queen Mother Yalerox's crowning achievement—the result of all of her A and B-Rank Laws coming together, and the personal tutelage of not one, but two SS-Ranked Paragons. The sheer Mana flowing into her from the Eye was enough for her to fight either of them to a standstill. It would be more than enough for that upstart aura that had crushed hers outside.

"Let us begin," she said. Her eyes glowed blue—the blue-green of the sea, with flecks of angry gray clouds.

"Yeah, let's."

Yalerox's eyes locked on one of the males. The core-broken one. "You've managed to stand. Amusing."

Then she saw his eyes, and the amusement drained out of her.

They glowed blue, too—the blue-white of lightning.

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